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Best feed for beef cattle is alfalfa grown in heavily wood ash mulched soils.
(great for people too)
We always rotated our pastures. We grew timothy, clover alfalfa and fescue. We had a few horses so had to be careful with the last. Timothy didn’t pose the problems that fescue did so the horses got timothy. Then our row crops. Corn, wheat and soybeans that helps fix nitrogen back into the soil. We sold our tobacco base long ago so no more tobacco is grow on our farm. We had four burley barns and one dark fired barn.
Wood ash is good but we didn’t have that many trees to turn into ash so...we didn’t rely on it. We did have a garden and put the ashes from our fireplace there for the next year.